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“Thank God,” he says. His voice is weak. “You were right, John. It was foolish to come here. I’m sorry.
I should have listened.”
“Shh,” I say.
I bend down and begin untying his ankles. He smells like urine.
“I was ambushed.”
“How many are there?” I ask.
“Three.”
“I’ve tied one of them up upstairs,” I say.
I free his ankles. He stretches his legs out and sighs with relief.
“I’ve been in this damn chair all day.”
I begin working his hands free.
“How in the hell did you get here?” he asks.
“Sam and I came together. We drove down.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“I had no other way.”
“What did you drive?”
“His father’s old truck.”
Henri is silent a minute while he ponders what that means.
“He doesn’t know anything,” I say. “I told him aliens are a hobby of yours, nothing more.”
He nods. “Well, I’m happy you made it. Where is he now?”
“Trailing one of them. I don’t know where they went.”
The creak of a floorboard comes from above us. I stand, Henri’s hands only halfway untied.
“Did you hear that?” I whisper.
We both watch the door with our breaths held. A foot steps onto the top stair, and then a second, and all at once the large man I passed earlier, the one Sam was trailing, comes into view.
“The party’s over, fellas,” he says. He is holding a gun aimed at my face. “Now, step away.”
I hold my hands up in front of me and take a step back. I think of using my powers to pull the gun away, but what if I somehow cause it to fire by accident? I’m not confident in my abilities just yet. It’s too risky.
“They told us you might be coming. That you would look like humans. That you were the real enemy,” the man says.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“They’re delusional,” Henri says. “They think we’re the enemy.”
“Shut up!” the man screams.
He takes three steps towards me. Then he moves the gun from me and fixes it straight on Henri.
“One false move by you and he gets it. You understand?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Now, catch this,” he says. He pulls down a roll of duct tape from the shelf beside him and throws it towards me. As it moves through the air, I stop it, suspended about eight feet off the ground, halfway between us. I start spi
“What the…”
While he’s distracted, I move my arm towards him with a throwing motion. The roll of tape flies back and slams him in the nose. Blood starts gushing, and as he reaches for it he drops the gun, which hits the ground and goes off. I point my hand towards the bullet and I make it stop, and behind me I hear Henri laugh. I move the bullet so that it hangs in front of the man’s face.
“Hey, fat boy,” I say.
He opens his eyes and sees the bullet in the air in front of his face.
“You’re go
I let the bullet fall to the ground at his feet. He turns to run, but I bring him back across the room and slam him against a large support pole. It knocks him out and he slumps to the floor. I grab the tape and tie him to the pole. After I’m sure he’s secured, I turn to Henri and finish freeing him.
“John, I think that’s the best surprise I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” he says in a whisper, such relief in his voice that I think tears might come next.
I smile proudly. “Thanks. It showed at di
“Sorry I missed it.”
“I told them you were tied up.”
He smiles.
“Thank God the Legacy came,” he says, and I realize that the stress of my Legacies forming—or the fear of them not forming—took a far greater toll on Henri than I imagined.
“So what happened to you?” I ask.
“I knocked on the door. All three of them were home. When I walked in one of them clubbed me in the back of the head. Then I woke up in this chair.” He shakes his head and says a long string of words in Loric that I know are curses. I finish untying him and he stands and stretches his legs.
“We need to get out of here,” he says.
“We have to find Sam.”
And then we hear him.
“John. You down there?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
EVERYTHING SLOWS. I SEE A SECOND PERSONat the top of the stairs. Sam yelps in surprise and I turn to him, silence filling my ears with the discordant hum that comes with slow motion. The man behind him gives him a hard shove that causes his feet to leave the ground, and, when he hits, it will be at the bottom of the stairs, where the concrete floor awaits. I watch him sail through the air, flailing his arms with a look of terror on his anguished face. Without giving it a single thought, my instinct takes over and I lift my hands at the very last second and catch him, his head a mere two inches above the basement floor.
I set him down gently.
“Shit,” Henri says.
Sam sits up and crawls backwards like a crab until he reaches the cinder-block wall. His eyes are wide-open, staring at the steps, his mouth moving but no words coming out. The figure who pushed him stands at the top of the stairs trying to figure out, like Sam, what just happened. It must be the third one.
“Sam, I tried to—,” I say.
The man at the top of the stairs turns and tries to sprint away but I force him down two of the stairs.
Sam looks at the man being held by an unseen force, then looks at my one arm extended towards him.
He is shocked and speechless.
I grab the duct tape and lift the man in the air and carry him up to the second floor, keeping him suspended the entire way. He yells obscenities while I tape him into a chair, but I hear none of them because my mind is racing to figure out what we will say to Sam about what just happened.
“Shut up,” I say.
He unloads another string of cuss words. I decide I’ve had enough so I tape his mouth shut and walk back to the basement. Henri is standing near Sam, who is still sitting there, with the same blank stare on his face.
“I don’t get it,” he says. “What just happened?”
Henri and I look at each other. I shrug.
“Tell me what’s happening,” Sam says, his voice pleading with us, tinged with desperation to know the truth, to know that he’s not crazy and that he didn’t imagine what he just saw.
Henri sighs and shakes his head. Then he says, “What the hell’s the point?”
“The point in what?” I ask.
He ignores me, and instead turns to Sam. He purses his lips together, looks at the man slumped in the chair to make sure he is still out, and then at Sam. “We aren’t who you think we are,” he says, and pauses. Sam stays silent, staring at Henri. I can’t read his face, and I have no idea what Henri is about to tell him—if he will again make up some elaborate story or, for once, tell him the truth—and it’s this latter that I’m truly hoping for. He looks at me and I nod my head in agreement.
“We came to Earth ten years ago from a planet named Lorien. We came because it was destroyed by the inhabitants of another planet named Mogadore. They destroyed Lorien for its resources because they had turned their own planet into a cesspool of decay. We came here to hide until we could return to Lorien, which we will one day do. But we were followed by the Mogadorians. They are here hunting us.
And I believe they are here to take over Earth, and that is why I came here today, to find out a little more.”
Sam says nothing. Had it been me who told him as much, I’m sure that he wouldn’t believe me, that he might become angry, but it is Henri who has told him, and there is a certain integrity within Henri that I have always felt, and I have no doubt that Sam feels it also. He looks over at me.
“I was right: you’re an alien. You weren’t joking when you admitted it,” Sam says to me.
“Yes, you were right.”
He looks back at Henri. “And those stories you told me on Halloween?”